July 10, 2010

Dall’Italia a Chicago

Thank you Italy for yet another fantastic tour! Chris Brokaw and I had a blast opening for our friends Uzeda in Torino, and then playing some great outdoor venues in Brescia, Vittorio Veneto, and Senigallia in beautiful summer weather. We visited our friend Morena who runs the best restaurant/venue in Faenza, and ended the trip in Rome where we caught up w/more friends, played multiple encores, and ate very, very well. We even played a birthday party on a vinyard in Vasto, where we recorded two songs on Chris’ Mac in the olive tree grove. Each and every show was wonderful, and we hope to return this fall.

After some frantic last-minute packing in Maine and 22 more hours of driving (on top of the 3200KM I had just driven in Italy), I type you from wonderful Chicago! Unfortunately our personal belongings are still stuck in Maine, so Caterina and I have been sleeping on the floor all week. But Allied is going to put us in a hotel until our stuff arrives on the 19th, so our backs should be a little less stiff soon enough. Meanwhile, we’ve been walking miles each day discovering our vast neighborhood. It includes the Old Town School of Folk Music, the Chicago Music Exchange, Chicago Fret Works, the Lincoln Park Zoo, Schuba’s, a beach on Lake Michigan, and about a thousand other wonderful destinations. What more could we ask for?

May 26, 2010

Brokaw e Farina suoneranno in Italia

Just a quick note to announce that Chris Brokaw and I will be playing some festivals in Italy this June. Dates are to the right as usual. Also, here’s an article I wrote on Mississippi John Hurt for a British Web zine. More news coming soon….

April 29, 2010

“Lawnmower” out now!

Chris Brokaw and I played four great shows this past weekend in Montpelier, Brooklyn, Boston, and Yarmouth, Maine. The standout show was at the Knitting Factory where we picked an early set of John Hurt and Gary Davis tunes for a great crowd, and escaped minutes before the thrash-metal band Toxic Holocaust began their sonic barrage from the big stage! Chris and I will play some festivals in Italy this June, and we’ll be back in Europe in the fall for more shows. I’m also happy to announce that the first (and hopefully not last) Lawnmower release is finally out on Cleanfeed. Lawnmower consists of Luther Gray (Joe Morris Trio), Daniel Littleton (Ida), Jim Hobbs (Fully Celebrated Orchestra), and myself, and we’re hoping to do a few shows this spring to celebrate the release. Here’s a colorful review on All About Jazz that describes the project.

April 18, 2010

Picking up the pieces….

As many of you already know, my father passed away suddenly when I was on tour w/Chris Brokaw in the UK a few weeks ago. I left the tour about midway through and flew to Florida where he was, and since then I’ve just been taking it easy and trying to pick up the pieces. My father and I led very different lives, but we were close friends who were very proud of each other, and we loved each other deeply. My father gave me the perseverance, drive, and sense of responsibility that has helped me succeed as a musician, and I’ll always be thankful to him for this. Needless to say it’s been a tough few weeks and I’m just now beginning to learn what life will be like without him, but thanks to family, friends, and my wonderful wife, things are as good as they could be right now.

Another bit of bad news is that the Glorytellers northern Europe tour that we had tentatively planned for June has not come to fruition. As it got closer to the World Cup, promoters became reticent to book shows, airfare went up, and it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to work out financially. But Chris Brokaw and I will be playing in Italy at the end of June, and then in Spain and Northern Europe in the fall, which we’re quite looking forward to. I should also mention that despite the crisis, Chris and I did have a wonderful time in the UK. Damnably did an exceptional job organizing the tour and putting out our record, and we had great shows in London, Nottingham, Liverpool, Oxford, and Leeds. We’ll be back soon!

And now for some good news: My wife, who is currently a professor of Italian language and literature at Colby College, landed a tenure-track position at DePaul University. We’re moving to Chicago in July! We’re truly excited for our new life, and the move will be great for me personally, as I have a couple record labels, a booking agent, and many, many good friends in the Second City.

And before I forget, Chris and I have some shows coming up this week in the Northeast. Dates and venues are below as usual…hope to see you there!

March 14, 2010

The sun…it burns!

Once again I feel like a jet-lagged vampire-zombie after 10-hour drives, late night sets, early-morning flights, sleeping upright in airports, and all the other delights that come with touring in Europe. But it was worth it: amazing shows, great hangs with friends new and old, and of course….the food, the wonderful, wonderful food. With the exception of Florence (we played the night of the San Remo finale), we had great turnouts just about everywhere, and the tour was a blast for all involved. Now I just have to work off those 5 extra pounds…

The Angel’s Message to Me is out just in time for our UK tour that starts this week! The record has been getting some play on BBC radio, a nice review on Delusions of Adequacy, and even a lukewarm 3-stars on the Sunday Times, written by standup comic/hipster Stewart Lee. More shows are in the works, so check back here soon.

February 4, 2010

Jan Plan, Brokaw/Farina Record, UK Tour!

I spent the month of January teaching a blues history course for Colby’s “Jan Plan”. That’s their name for squeezing an entire semester of work into one dark, frigid Maine January! It was intense for sure, and we explored almost 50 years of recordings from Sylvester Weaver to Lightnin’ Hopkins. My students did some fantastic research on topics like the Great Migration, the history of blues record labels (Chess, Paramount, Okeh, Bluebird, Vocalition, Victor), John and Alan Lomax, African-American worksongs, Senegambian music, Chicago’s Maxwell Street, early recording technologies, and just about everything in between. Of course we also did some deep, deep listening, and it was a privilege to hear the music of John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Leadbelly, Junior Wells, and other favorites through the ears of some very bright college students. Hope to do it again next year!

My music theory course at the University of Maine is going strong, but I switch gears next week when I fly to Europe with Glorytellers. We’ll hit Spain, Italy, and Southern France this month, and be back for the north in May and June. Also, Chris Brokaw and I finally mastered our record with Jeff Lipton at Peerless in Boston, and it sounds great! It’ll appear on Chris’ Capitan Records in the US, and on Damnably in the UK in March, followed by a UK tour! Dates for everything are posted to the right. It’s been about 6 or 7 years since I’ve played in the UK, so I’m quite looking forward to it…quite!

January 7, 2010

So much for holidays….

Man, twenty-ten is moving faaaasssst! I’m deep into teaching blues history at Colby College, I start my theory course at the University of Maine on Tuesday, and then Glorytellers hit Italy/Spain in Feb! Then back home for more teaching, Brokaw and I tour the UK in March, home again to finish the semester, and the band heads back to Northern Europe for 25 shows in May/June. I’m taking the rest of the year off….

Here’s a recent interview I did for a website mysteriously called “The 405″. Despite, the BBC’s predictions about my career,  Atone is still getting props. Here are a couple nice reviews on Popmatters.com and Exclaim.ca. Dig my new SG and Pete Rose quaff?

December 23, 2009

December Redux

Thanks to everyone who came out for the Curtis Harvey/Glorytellers shows! Here’s a nice little blurb in TimeOut Chicago about our show at the Hideout, which turned out to be a blast despite a windchill factor of ten-gazillion degrees below zero. We also had great shows (and thankfully, good turnouts) at the Cake Shop in NYC, Kung Fu Necktie (yeah, I know) in Philly, and even in Buffalo and Rochester. The rest of the shows were still fun, despite some predictably low turnouts. (Stormy Tuesday night in Cleveland, etc.). It was great to catch up with old friends in NY, Chicago and DC, but the best part of the tour was watching Curtis perform night after night. It’s rare to see someone so genuinely honest on stage, and his vivid, autobiographical songs became an inspiration for the tour. The shows inevitably became a family affair; everyone was running on and off the stage sitting in on each others’ songs. We’re sad it’s over, and Curtis and crew will be sorely missed. Fortunately Europe dates are coming up in Feb, so check back soon for more info on that.

November 22, 2009

Thx Ida!

We had another fine Ida/Glorytellers show last week in Brooklyn. It was our best turnout yet at Union Hall, so thanks to all of you who came! We’ll be hitting the East Coast and Midwest w/Curtis Harvey in a couple weeks, so please stop by for a show. Atone continues to get some nice press, mostly from the UK. Here’s a loooong one from Rockfeedback. Even I learned something about me!

November 3, 2009

Silent No More

Long story short: Web site gets hacked in back July. I stare at the computer for hours trying to fix it, give up after much frustration, and swear to spend less time in front of the computer and more behind the guitar. Months go by. You send me nice emails inquiring about my silence. After slowly realizing how lucky I am that you actually care, here I am once again staring at a computer when I could be playing guitar. In any case, nice to see you again too, and a lot has happened since then. Where to start?

First and foremost, the new Glorytellers album called “Atone” is finally out on Southern Records (CD/LP/Download) in the US/Europe, and Afterhours (CD) in Japan. This one’s got everything I love: harmonizing guitars, vivid narratives, the supple rhythms of drummer Gavin McCarthy, and the clinical production values of engineers Andy Hong and Jeff Lipton, all wrapped up in gorgeous original artwork by Sonnenzimmer. It represents 2 years of work (much of it Andy’s), and I’m quite proud to see it finally hit. Here’s a 5-star review on the UK’s Rockfeedback, more kind words from the UK at the 405, and the Line of Best Fit,  a recent interview at The Voice of Energy blog,  and a recent interview/performance I did for ScannerFM in Barcelona. And this kinda-funny-kinda-sad BBC review came out of nowhere and just about says it all!

Atone was not without its birthing pains: apparently the first batch of CDs were pressed with someone else’s music in our package. Unfortunately they made it to Amazon before anyone caught it, and my label tells me there are still a few that escaped the dragnet. If you receive a bum Atone CD, contact me and I’ll forward your complaint to the appropriate parties. (Since the Karate 595 2xLP was shipped with the wrong song order listed on the jacket a few years back, I’ve became fine customer service rep.)

We also have a nice chunk of road time coming up: On November 7th we’ll share the stage with our pals Ida at Union Hall in Brooklyn. Then we’ll be out with Curtis Harvey for a couple weeks of Midwest/East Coast shows in early December. Curtis has a new record out on Fat Cat, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen him play, so I’m looking forward to the tour. Chris Brokaw and I will open Philly, NY, and Boston with our set of old-time/ragtime/blues tunes we’ve been chewing on for the past few years. (Those will soon be available on Chris’ Capitan Records.) Then in February of ‘10 we’ll be off to Spain and Italy with bells on, and later in the year to northern Europe. More on that soon. As usual, tour dates are posted here, at the Glorytellers Myspace page, and at the Southern Records Glorytellers page.

The last bit of news some of you may already know: my wife and I recently moved to a beautiful little New England town called Hallowell, 3 hours north of Boston. We live a few hundred yards from the mighty Kennebeck River, in the Hallowell Row House, a Federal-style worker’s residence built by Isaac Gage in 1846 that housed some of the area’s early textile workers. We made the move last July after Caterina finished her PhD and got a teaching gig at nearby Colby College. I’ve also been teaching a seminar on post-1958 jazz at the University of Maine, and I’ll teach a blues history course at Colby this winter. The pace is quite a bit slower than in Boston, and in many respects Hallowell reminds us of the small town in Northeastern Italy where Caterina and I spend a month or two each year. With the leaves changing to every shade of gold, Hallowell is also stunningly beautiful, and has provided a wonderful setting to work on some new music. So things are working out just fine up here. More soon….

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